tcsetsid(3)

tcsetsid3

Set session id associated with a controlling terminal

Usage

#include <termios.h>

int

tcsetsid(int fd, pid_t pid);

Library

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

Overview

The tcsetsid() function sets associates a session identified by pid with a controlling terminal specified by fd.

This implementation only allows the controlling terminal to be changed by the session leader itself. This implies that pid always has to be equal to the process ID.

It is unsupported to associate with a terminal that already has an associated session. Conversely, it is also unsupported to associate to a terminal when the session is already associated with a different terminal.

Errors

If an error occurs, tcsetsid() returns -1 and the global variable errno is set to indicate the error, as follows:

[EBADF]

The fd argument is not a valid file descriptor.

[ENOTTY]

The file descriptor represented by fd is not a terminal.

[EINVAL]

The pid argument is not equal to the session ID of the calling process.

[EPERM]

The calling process is not a session leader.

[EPERM]

The session already has an associated terminal or the terminal already has an associated session.

Releases

39 releases since FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE; the text changed 26 times.

  1. 8.0
  2. 8.1
  3. 8.2
  4. 8.3
  5. 8.4
  6. 9.0
  7. 9.1
  8. 9.2
  9. 9.3
  10. 10.0
  11. 10.1
  12. 10.2
  13. 10.3
  14. 10.4
  15. 11.0
  16. 11.1
  17. 11.2
  18. 11.3
  19. 11.4
  20. 12.0
  21. 12.1
  22. 12.2
  23. 12.3
  24. 12.4
  25. 13.0–13.1
  26. 13.2
  27. 13.3–16.0

History

A tcsetsid() function first appeared in QNX. It does not comply to any standard.

From base 16.0-CURRENT-20261027-61c70dc16a79 in FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27). Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.